A lot of flowers are blooming in the garden now and they are looking pretty good because we have not had many thunderstorms to knock them over nor have we had drought. This is the time of year that you can hear the cicadas and crickets, and start seeing more butterflies and bees on the flowers.

Monarch butterfly depositing eggs on swamp milkweed.

Swamp milkweed in bloom. I am watching for the Monarch caterpillar, but am not too hopeful as we have a lot of predators around, such as wasps, that hopefully keep a check on the cabbage moth worms

Black-eyed Susans are cheery in front of the ornamental grass Miscanthus ‘Morning Light.’ The Russian sage on the right is flowering a lavender color and the pink hydrangeas are having their best year.

Close up of Black-Eyed Susans

A view of the yard mid-summer. The chinquapin oak tree has tiny acorns on it and it keeps growing each year. The pole beans are climbing the bean structure and starting to produce. Vegetables and flowers are doing their thing around the yard.

The coneflowers seem to have multiplied around the yard and I love it. Liatris spicata blazing star flowers are blooming in the background.

Joe Pye weed and coneflowers in a pink part of the garden.

I have not had time to investigate what insect is sitting on this coneflower. I can see its little claws and it has wings as well.

A question mark butterfly sunning on the laundry rack.

Closed wings on question mark butterfly.

The first and only nasturtium flower in the garden so far this year. I planted two packets full of seeds, but some of the other plants are very small, probably due to lack of rain. I am too lazy to water this time of year….

Pink flowers of the yellow wax bean plants.

Zinnias and dill. Both are great butterfly plants. The dill is a host plant for black swallowtail caterpillars and the zinnias attract butterflies, bees and goldfinches.

Pulling back you can see the yarrow under the oak tree along with other blooms. I forgot to stake up the yarrow and it can get kind of messy later on, but it is beautiful this time of year. I just cut it way back when the blooms die.

Heliopsis helianthoides false sunflower ‘summer sun’

False sunflowers keep blooming for months as long as I cut back the dead flowers.

The gaillardia blanket flowers started blooming this past week.

Zooming in for a close up, it looks like a very little spider has been busy and caught a tasty meal.

Dark red iris

Cranesbill geranium ‘Rozanne’

Digitalis purpurea foxgloves. The foxgloves cheer us up and are favorites for bumblebees and hummingbirds.

I went to check on the raspberries, which are just behind the foxgloves and came across this insect. It looked a bit like a dragonfly, but close up it also looks like a mosquito. It might be a crane fly.

Our America plum trees are sticky this year with some kind of aphid or something. Anyway a large number of ladybugs have arrived and are scouring the leaves.

Although we had a lot of plums last year, unfortunately that is not the case this year. The plums seem to be gradually being destroyed by something.

We have been picking many romaine lettuce leaves. In the back left is a large wild kale plant that I planted from seed last fall, so that it would be ready this spring to eat. The potatoes on the left came up unplanned. I guess I missed harvesting a few last year. You might be able to see the large mint plant behind the lettuce. I pulled a lot of mint up out of the garden this spring and am always whacking it back.

My Arab garden friends were not impressed with my mint. Apparently it is the wrong type for mint tea. So they brought me the correct type of mint, which I put it in a pot in the ground for now. I might pull up my old mint and get this new variety in the garden….when I get time.

I have a lot of tomato cages up getting ready for the coming vegetable action. We put the pole bean structure up and the beans are growing. The clematis is blooming on the back wall. June is here.

See the bunny? It is watching us. Dan and I are trying various things to get rid of this little guy, but have not been successful yet. I am hoping we get it outside the fence before it eats too many new plants….

This is a “yellow” butterfly weed that I planted last year, I think, but it just got going his year. The butterfly weed are blooming around the yard and hopefully will attract some monarchs.

This was the view from my lounge chair this afternoon. In the front some ground cover is blooming yellow. In the back the orange butterfly weed is blooming and attracting a variety of bugs. Just to the left of it the pineapple sage is getting taller and looking healthy. You can also see a few blueberries on our little ‘top hat’ blueberry bush that are starting to ripen in the middle of the picture.

It looks like my first blueberry is getting ready to eat on the ‘Duke’ blueberry bush! We don’t have that many blueberries as I have not worked hard to acidify the soil around them.

It looks like the basil is ready for me to make some basil pesto! In front are prairie verbena flowers.

Just above the basil is Heliopsis helianthoides ‘Summer Sun.” I was lying on my lounge chair enjoying these flowers and watching the clouds float by. Summer at its finest.

We also have some heliopsis blooming in our little meadow.

I took this dragonfly picture in the meadow early this morning, where it had rested in the grass for the night. It is probably some type of skimmer.

A little before noon I found this turtle on the road in front of our house. We also found a smaller turtle on the road near Lake Katherine this morning. Maybe with all the rain recently the usual rocks in the lakes are covered with water and the turtles are looking for other places to catch some sun. That is just a theory.

Turtle foot.

The Tokyo cross turnips are coming along well.

We are throwing in chopped up collard leaves in our recipes now, too.

I have seen black swallowtail butterflies in our garden depositing eggs, so was glad when I finally saw a caterpillar chewing on our curly parsley.

Later in the week I noticed it had travelled a few feet to the rhubarb leaves where a cocoon was getting started.

Today I went back to the same spot and found this cocoon, well disguised. Little things like this make me happy!

The agastace is in full bloom now and attracting butterflies and bees of all types. I should have studied entomology! I just checked out Sue Hubbell’s book about bugs, “Broadsides from the Other Orders.”

I think this is a female eastern tiger swallowtail on the agastache ‘blue fortune’ giant hyssop plant.

Here is a side view of the eastern tiger swallowtail on the hyssop. I like the striped body. It looks like she is using her proboscis to sip nectar. Is that kind of like a straw?

Limenitis arthemis – red spotted purple butterfly, I think, on agastache. At first I thought it was a black swallowtail, but it does not have a tail.

Here is a closed wing view of the red spotted purple butterfly on agastache. You can see the pollen on its body.

Just below the agastache a black swallowtail caterpillar is resting in the parsley. There are a lot of hungry birds in the yard, though, so I am never sure if these guys will survive.

Agastache ‘blue fortune’ giant hyssop.’ On the left is heliopsis helianthoides ‘Summer Sun.’ The agastache plant is really buzzing, mostly with bees and flies.

I think this is a carpenter bee on the agastache. In any case it is a very big bee.

Here is a different kind of bee. It looks a little more like a honey bee of some type.

Red admiral butterflies are fairly common in the yard. Here on Echinacea purpurea – purple coneflower.

There are small white cabbage moths all over the yard. Here on Russian sage with miscanthus ornamental grass in the background.

One day I was looking out of the living room window and I saw something slide out of the bottom of the big silver maple tree. I went outside with my camera and saw this yellow caterpillar with black spikes coming out of its back scurrying across the lawn. Looking it up online I found that it is an American dagger moth caterpillar. Apparently they leave the tree and look for a good place to make their cocoon. The spikey hairs are poisonous.

Red dragonfly on liatris spicata – blazing star – a native plant. I saw a number of red dragonflies around the garden yesterday. In Japanese the name is “aka tombo.” If you look that name up on line you will hear a famous Japanese song.

I was having lunch outside one day this week and almost did not see this big green dragonfly that rested on the butterfly weed near where I was sitting.

Praying Mantis update: I have not seen any praying mantises in the yard this year. Considering that I found 6 – 8 praying mantis egg sacs from last year I expected more. It may have been the very cold winter or it may be that we really have a lot of bird in the yard this year eating the babies. Or it may be some other reason.